Thursday, July 23, 2009

I went to the yarn store on my day off with two great gals...oh the fun we had! Despite soggy feet to start the day off, I forgot all my troubles in the yarn store. I can't imagine being in a shop with a no-touch policy. It's not that I'm super touchy-feely, at least not like I picture girls to be, but I'm horribly indecisive. I want to give each yarn a fair chance to be honored as a decent bit of gorgeousness. Well, I'm very grateful I had a voice of reason with me who helped me admit that I can write down the names of the skeins that will be there when I come back next time, so that I could focus my purchases and get it sorta near what I had planned for. Ha. Sorry, my little nudibranch, but you must wait a little longer before you are born!

I think my frantic buzzing about the store must have annoyed the owners a bit. At least, I annoyed myself. By the end, I was on so much sensory overload that I was unable to speak clearly or intelligibly. I did come away with a few goodies, though, including a hank of magenta Manos del Uruguay, enough Cascade 220 in Azure blue (kinda tealish) for a sweater, and (drumroll)... a couple pounds of chocolatey Romney fleece. This will be my first venture into working with raw, or nearly raw, fiber. (Insert crazy man laugh here)

My post-LYS therapy involved a sock I'm working on in Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn for Cat Bordhi's Coriolis pattern. I'm having fun plugging in the numbers and writing them down in my little black book. I just turned the heel, and IT FITS!!! I’m lovin everything about this sock…the colors, the feel of the yarn, the fit…I don’t know, but the sock bug may have bitten me tonight for the first time.

I finally got my rear in gear and finished my Noro striped scarf, as per Brooklyn Tweed. I used two colorways in Noro's Yuzen, and I like them together. I wondered what would go with this rather dark scarf--until I told my lil' sis she needed a bit of color to brighten up her army green top. So, guys and gals, I think I have just the ticket if you like dark neutrals. This.

It's soft, too. I'm not a Noro snob, but I think everyone who complains about Noro needs to just lie down for a while. It doesn't have to be scratchy, and its quirks are made up for in the final product. I was about to say you just can't come up with stuff like this, but as I am knitting the sock, that is exactly what I want to attempt. I keep thinking my next plan is to knit socks using singles I've spun (or will spin)...it can't be much crazier than the Silk Garden Sock is. It's uneven, it twists up on itself, and it makes me want to scream because I like it alot when I try it on. I may be overexcited, but it still does make one great sock, in my opinion.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Okay. I have always been shy around cameras. When I was a wee lad, all my family photographs showed a little boy crossing his eyes. I guess I have issues taking myself seriously. Thankfully, you can't see my eyes in these pictures.

I love how this bag turned out. I wonder if I should show you the before picture...hm, nah.

As for the sizing, I modified it just a little bit, but I don't know if I could recreate it exactly. The smaller bags said to cast on 160 sts, and the Spacious Show and Tell Moebius Bag called for 165, so I think I picked a number in between. Then with each increase/decrease I ended up eyeballing it, and a couple times, fudging it. One delicious part of felting is that your knitting can look somewhat crappy, but it literally comes out in the wash.

One feature I like in my bag is that you can see the construction without getting dizzy. And it's just not super-stripey. This bag brings back happy memories of Ecuador. I can just imagine stealing Cat's copyright and sitting in some crowded marketplace selling felted moebius bags, and trying to sneak extra dollars off the tourists. Of course, I've never been very entrepreneurial, and I'm not even sure I can spell it. So I may never be able to realize my dream of making money off my knitting. But if I did, I would love to make these. As it is, I can't imagine just replicating what I've already seen or done. Make each one unique, that's what I say.

Monday, July 13, 2009

I hate waiting. On the other hand, the excitement of knowing I'd come home to a new project that's drying on the rack kept me going through the day. Here's the moebius bag, still a little wet, and just as good as I had hoped:

Cool, huh? I had a lot of input on this bag. I was going to use my handspun for the contrast color, since blue and brown, and blue and green are my fave colorways. Why not put them together? At knitting circle, two things happened to deter me. Jennypoo gave me one of her first dyeing experiments, and she convinced me that the warm brown was asking for a different palette than the yarn I had spun.

I took it well and only cried a little. Using the free yarn she had given me, as well as the macaroni-and-cheese-colored yarn she had started with, I added some delicious Brown Sheep yarn I had purchased simply because it was on sale and I loved the color. Came in pretty handy here, I think. Jenny also suggested the zigzag motif, and I was verrry slow in coming to it. Took me all afternoon to get it right. Now that it's all there, ah luvs it.

A funny coincidence surfaced as I knit this. I was using my new Harmony needles, which I must say are lovely, but...well, I wish they were just natural wood grain colors...not akin to clown barf. Nice clown barf, but still, it can get difficult to see lace on these guys. As much as I dislike the colors on the needles, and as much as I like the colorwork on the satchel, it turns out they're almost identical. Okay, KnitPicks...I'm sorry. Your needles made this project easy and fun.

I could name this project "My First Moebius" or "Harmonies Huzzah", but I am a huge fan of boxed mac-n-cheese. So this has to be my Mac-n-Cheez Moebius Satchel. It's not a handbag, ladies. It's a satchel. *scratch and spit*

That's all I feel like typing, and more than you feel like reading. Whoever "you" is. So TTFN!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Ok. So here's the deal: I like to knit more than I like to type. Actually, more than a lot of things. But, as I couldn't really make it to all the places I'd like to be sans a car, I figure I should let the world know I'm alive. Hello, world.

I want to get down to the local coffee shop and get some yarn on, so I'll keep this relatively short (relatively being the operative word here). I'm eager to finish my first moebius bag today if I can...just gotta close up the bottom and knit the pouch, then felt it. Can't wait for that. But, I guess I gotta, huh? About the moebius...I figured it would be pointless to knit, just so that I could say it's a cool strap that twists permanently. But once I got past the first row or two, I found two incentives to make more moebii:

1. It's a delightfully easy knit

2. It really is a cool concept.

Maybe Cat Bordhi's concept of magical knitting seems a bit over the top for my liking, but I really do think it's a bit magical. Intriguing, at least. And since I spend a lot of time trying to get people's attention and interest, this may be one of the tricks I pull out of my pocket. I certainly have a desire to knit some over-the-shoulder project bags, since I have a habit of knitting as I go...sometimes literally.

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A Smidgen of Knitterly Jargon

FO - Finished Object

UFO - Unfinished Object

WIP - Work In Progress

KAL - Knit-a-long; knitters near or far unite over a common project/theme, and more-or-less simultaneously progress through the project. Done well, it can be a very nice way to stay connected over long distances... kinda like watching the same movie while staying on the phone does for long-distance dating. It's a shared process.

frog - I appeal to Theresa Vinson Stenersen's explanation in this article

rip - unraveling your knitting by removing the needle and yanking on the working yarn

tink - undoing your knitting one stitch at a time by reversing the knitting process ("knit" spelled backwards)